Making the world a better place
As a UX Research designer, I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter where you work; you are making the world a better place. ✨
I. Why do I care about making the world a better place to live?
Since I was 17, I have always been trying to make a positive impact on society by working towards achieving sustainable development challenges. The main reason why I have been trying to do this is that I grew up in Peru, where 20% (2020 data) of its inhabitants live in extreme poverty, and where public systems such as education, health, and many others do not work efficiently. As a result, the quality of life for many people is low. I witnessed this reality on the news and on the streets while growing up. That’s why I volunteered for almost 3 years at an NGO named TECHO, whose primary objective is to eradicate poverty in Latin America. Here, I had the opportunity to belong to the research team — in which some of my duties were to interview many families who lived in extreme poverty. I can say that this was the time when I became more empathetic. I spent an average of 3–5 days living in a place some blocks away from where these people were living, and I would build wooden houses for them. I know my experience wasn’t the same as truly living there, but I had a better understanding of the context in which they lived. This was when I realized that I really wanted to work on improving people’s lives and, thus, making the world a better place to live.
II. UX Researcher in Ed-tech
Since I was very oriented to work in fields I considered more “relevant,” I got my first job as a UX Researcher in the education field. I worked for a Peruvian university whose principal goal is to provide high-quality studies to people with scarce economic resources. At this college, I worked in the digital transformation field. I participated in various projects, directly contributing to the ideation, development, and delivery of digital products and service design. My main focus was on research. I gathered quantitative and qualitative data — applying different methodologies — so we could make decisions about the products and services we were going to develop and how to make some existing processes more efficient. Since I was working in EdTech, I felt that I was obviously contributing to society!
One of the projects I worked on was UGO, an app that enables students with limited study time, primarily due to work commitments, to schedule online sessions with tutors for specific academic subjects. Within the first four months, the app facilitated 700 successful sessions, and one year later, that number surged to over 36,000. In addition to this, there was an 11% reduction in freshman student desertion within the first year of implementing the app. Additionally, the app now allows users to book sessions with psychologists for emotional support and with the financial department for financial guidance.
III. Betraying my ideals? — Transition to a Telecom
I knew that in order to grow professionally, I had to work in a different field. It would have been nice (at that time) to get a job in the health field or an NGO, etc. However, life doesn’t always go as planned, so I got a job as a UX/CX Researcher in a Vietnamese telecom that has a subsidiary in Peru.
I’m not gonna lie, I was excited about this new role and eager to learn about telecoms! At the same time, I felt I was betraying my ideals of working in something ‘relevant,’ as I mentioned. But little did I know how my perception was gonna change.
IV. I’m making a “relevant” impact on people’s lives!
Before I started interviewing people, I wasn’t expecting to feel fulfilled or thinking that I was making a huge impact. But to provide more context, as a telecom, we have many different users from varying socioeconomic levels.
When I started the interviews, I was trying to understand why our users/clients were playing a “mini-game” within our app. I mean, the obvious answer could have been “Because of the benefits we are giving them, DUH.” I was genuinely curious to understand why these benefits (free MB, free calls, gift cards) held varying degrees of importance for our users and why some of them found them more significant.
What I discovered is that due to COVID, a lot of people needed the internet to do their normal activities, like working or attending college. But also, many people didn’t have jobs anymore (so they were struggling to pay the bills), and others had kids who needed to study remotely.
Here’s where the WOW moment occurred. People couldn’t afford to pay for a Wi-Fi service, or the Wi-Fi service didn’t have coverage in the area where they were living (it happens that telecom carriers don’t provide Wi-Fi services in some low socioeconomic areas). So people were paying for our unlimited internet mobile plan and were using their phones as a hotspot for their devices!
Well, this mobile plan gives unlimited internet but limited high-speed internet. That’s why users/clients were playing this mini-game — to get more free high-speed MB!
When I discovered that, I felt that my work was relevant because we, as a telecom, were literally giving people an alternative to continue with their lives despite COVID, especially those who couldn’t access or afford a Wi-Fi plan.
V. Retro time!
I forgot one of the most important things that a UX designer should always have in mind: not to judge. I judged this field just because it wasn’t specifically trying to solve a sustainable development challenge.
-You can always make a change despite the field in which you are working. Don’t be like me, and don’t feel that your job is irrelevant just because you’re not working for the UN or a similar organization. Believe me, your work is improving someone else’s life. And if you feel like you’re not, understand your users better, and get to know them better! Maybe you’re already making a huge impact, and if not, maybe you can help them in an aspect that you consider more relevant.
Thanks for reading! Have a good day :)
